Higher Education

The Senate will be holding a hearing on the HEA this Wednesday entitled Reauthorizing the Higher Education Act: Exploring Barriers and Opportunities within Innovation. The hearing will be held at 10 am on Wednesday, July 22. Watch the hearing here.

Today, the Senate finished its debate and votes on amendments to S. 1177, the Every Child Achieves Act, a bill to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). In total, of the 79 amendments that were voted on, 66 were adopted and 13 failed. The Senate has passed a bipartisan overhaul of the long-expired No Child…

The White House’s Director of the Office of Management and Budget, Shaun Donovan, and OSTP Director, John Holdren, sent their annual joint FY2017 priorities memo to the science agency heads. The memo urges agency leaders to take the priorities into consideration as they begin to prepare their FY2017 budget proposals for OMB. Per the memo, “Agency proposals…

The House will consider HR 6, the 21st Century Cures Act. The bipartisan bill modifies current federal processes involving medical research, developing drugs and other treatments, and testing and approving those drugs and treatments in an effort to accelerate the development and delivery of cures to diseases and medical conditions. It reauthorizes the National Institutes of…

This evening, the House further considered and passed HR 5, the Student Success Act, which reauthorizes the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). The House voted on ten amendments for which recorded votes were already requested in February 2015 and considered four new amendments, as well as a Democratic motion to recommit. The bill passed by…

Today, the Senate Appropriations Committee passed it’s FY16 Labor-H bill by a vote of 16-14. The Senate draft would cut spending from the 2015 enacted level by almost $4 billion to $153 billion and is $14.5 billion below President Barack Obama’s request. The bill would eliminate funding for the Independent Payment Advisory Board, created by the 2010 health…

The House Appropriations Committee passed it’s FY16 Labor-H bill by a vote of 30-21. The passage came after hours of debate during which Democrats bitterly criticized funding levels for domestic discretionary accounts and saw a series of their amendments defeated. The bill is $3.7 billion below fiscal 2015 enacted levels and $14.6 billion below President Barack Obama’s…

As discussed yesterday, the House’s FY16 Interior appropriations bill contained significant cuts and policy riders which would be of serious concern to the White House. Accordingly, the White House has issued a Statement of Administrative Policy (SAP) about the House’s draft bill, which includes a veto threat. Additionally, the OMB Director Donovan wrote a letter on the House’s…

The Senate Appropriations Labor, Health, Human Services, Education and Labor Subcommittee considered and passed their FY16 Labor-H bill today. While the Senate version has a higher discretionary amount than the House version, which will need to be worked out in conference. Education Funding The Committee bill provides funding to increase the maximum Pell Grant award from $5,775…

The House Appropriations Committee posted the committee report to their FY16 Labor, HHS, and Education (Labor-H) appropriations bill today giving additional insight to the legislation passed earlier last week. The bill provides a new maximum Pell award of $5,915 but discretionary funding is down $370 million. They take this money from the current surplus. The committee report states (page 133):…